Wikia CEO claims profitability, 3x growth
Gil Penchina, chief exec of wiki community hosting company Wikia, says the firm has quietly achieved the main goal that differentiates it from non-profit Wikipedia: It’s making money. In a press release scheduled to go out later today, Wikia will claim profitability, plus a jump from 2.8 million to 6.5 million U.S. visitors in the first half of 2009, as measured by comScore.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales co-founded the company in 2004. Wales is still “very… Continue Reading
Poor economy killed Wikia Search
Wikipedia has been one of the biggest successes in the history of the Internet. So has Google. So on paper it makes some sense that combining the two would result in a service that would also be hugely popular. Unfortunately, that didn’t work out so well for Wikia Search.
The wiki-style search engine started by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is closing down, Webware first reported earlier today. In confirming the news, Wales attempts to deflect the… Continue Reading
Wikia cuts staff by 10 percent
Wikia, a company that provides wiki and search services and was started by Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales, has let go about 10 percent of its employees. The layoffs came as part of a restructuring that will refocus the San Francisco company on sales and marketing. To this end, it is actually hiring in those areas, according to Wales.
Many other startups in the Valley have already turned to or are eyeing layoffs as a strategy to… Continue Reading
Wikia lets companies add their widgets as search results
If you want the most useful information possible to appear in response to a search, why not allow information portals like the community news aggregator Digg and travel site Kayak add it themselves? Search Wikia is opening itself up to allow companies to do just that, by adding their own widget to search results.
Wikia was started by Wikipedia cofounder Jimmy Wales in 2006 to try to take monetary advantage of the user contributions that drove… Continue Reading
Search Wikia returns for more punishment with new features
It seems that all major new search engines undergo a somewhat similar birth. For months before they’re seen, they’re hyped, and anticipation builds to a fever pitch. The phrase “Google Killer” is inevitably bandied about. Then they’re released … to mass disappointment. The crowd disperses, at which point the true work can begin.
That’s more or less what happened to Search Wikia, the commercial counterpart to Wikipedia. Search Wikia proposes to improve search results through direct… Continue Reading
Search Wikia takes a step closer to the promise of ’search meets Wikipedia’
When the guy behind Wikipedia launches a search engine, the world is going to watch. And watch they did when Jimmy Wales unveiled Search Wikia in January — perhaps a little too closely. I say that because while some were expecting to see a “Google-killer“, the site we saw was a bare-bones engine in the very early alpha testing stage.
But now, it’s getting closer.
I got a chance to play with some of the upcoming changes… Continue Reading
Wikia partners with Kaltura to let video makers collaborate
Wikia today announced a partnership with collaborative video site Kaltura that will allow the more than a million users of its MediaWiki software to post and collaborate using Kaltura content.
Kaltura, the self-proclaimed “YouTube meets the Wiki” (previous coverage here and here ), has a video extension that lets its users start a collaborative video project by uploading video clips, photos, or audio tracks to its wiki. Users can then edit collaboratively using Kaltura’s browser-based video editor. Users can import their video creations… Continue Reading
Search Wikia launches: Will it threaten Google?
[Update: See our subsequent post here, which includes a deeper look, after Search Wikia gets slammed by other initial reviews]
Search Wikia, a new search engine site, has launched publicly after two weeks of private testing.
The search engine has been highly anticipated for its unique, open-source approach to search as well as its high profile founder, Jimmy Wales (pictured here), who has led online encyclopedia coverage).
We spoke with Wales under embargo last week about his plans.
This… Continue Reading
Wikia to launch new social search engine, more on Monday
Search Wikia, the highly anticipated search engine by Wikia, the for-profit company of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, will launch publicly on Monday. It is currently in private testing mode, and we’ll write more upon launch.
The huge success of Wikipedia in mobilizing humans makes this project particularly notable. It’s a fascinating alternative to Google’s computer-focused approach.
We’ve tested Grub, the service’s way of crawling the Internet’s web sites to collect data. Grub is a “distributed search crawler,”… Continue Reading
Roundup: Veoh sues, MySpace’s tiny profit, Nirvanix, Wikipedia’s color-coding, more
Here’s the latest action:
Veoh Networks files preemptive suit against Universal Music Group — Veoh, the San Diego video start-up we’ve written about, said it filed the suit to assert its rights as a copyright-compliant company after UMG threatened it with litigation.
Geni gets cloned by a German Verwandt, but there’s also Israeli MyHeritage — Verwandt, the German copycat of the family tree social network company Geni, told us last month it had raised financing from Neuhaus Partners, and… Continue Reading
Roundup: Murdoch closer on WSJ, Scoop Bar, Wikia-Grub, Hitachi and more
Here’s the latest action:
Murdoch appears to have enough Bancroft family support for purchase –The jury is still officially out, but the NYT is saying it looks like Dow Jones and its jewel, the Wall Street Journal, will indeed to go to Murdoch’s News Corp.
Hakia’s Scoop Bar — Hakia, one of the new search engines trying to take on Google by using “semantic” technology, has released a so-called Scoop Bar, which takes you more directly to the text… Continue Reading
TextDigger, Hakia say they can improve search
TextDigger is the latest company seeking that Holy Grail: Improving on Google’s results by understanding the sense of the words you’re looking for.
TextDigger’s search engine is called Digger, and it just launched at the DEMO conference.
First, some context: Digger, of San Jose, joins Powerset, the San Francisco start-up, and Hakia, of New York, and others which are trying to do something similar. Our piece on Powerset sparked debate within the search industry, namely because some… Continue Reading
The significant response to wiki search idea
Wikia.com, the Silicon Valley company that is building an electronic library on hundreds of thousands of topics, has received a significant interest in its open search engine idea.
Wikia heard from 700 engineers volunteering help to build the search engine — and that interest was generated from a single article by the Times of London, Gil Penchina, chief executive, told VentureBeat last week. The search engine will resemble the Wiki format of Wikipedia. The idea is… Continue Reading
Wikia’s coffers, Browster dies, closed Dash, Techdirt’s $, and RepoMan Redux
Roundup of the latest Silicon Valley action:
Browster, dies — The web 2.0 carnage is beginning to pile up. This week’s casualty is San Francisco’s Browster, the company that wanted to save you time by popping up a little image of a page when you scrolled over a link — letting you avoid clicking. It focused on search results at Google, but never found a way to make money. It munched through $5.8 million in funding from… Continue Reading
Wikia to launch social search engine — amid a sea of others
Wikia, the San Mateo start-up founded by Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales, is working on a search engine that will use the same strategy as Wikipedia’s user-reliant encyclopedia.
The project is secretive, but has a preliminary launch date of the first quarter of 2007, the Times of London reports.
Wales says Google’s flaws have become more apparent:
Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try… Continue Reading
Amazon takes major stake in Wikia
Wikia, a San Mateo company that allows groups to share information about their interests with wiki technology, has raised a second round of funding — all of it coming from Amazon.com.
It is not clear how much traction Wikia company has gained. The company says more than two thousand wiki sites have been created on its platform, edited by 30,00 registered users. Wikia wants to users do everything outside of Wikipedia’s collaborative encyclopedia process.
It enables… Continue Reading